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Topic: Star Ruler to no longer be available on Impulse (Read 44277 times)

i have never bought or sold a game at gamestop just because how they treat independant companies, but i've had an external version of star ruler since i bought it so its not a huge deal, though it is sad

I have been an Impulse user for several years now. But things are not as they once were.

I purchased and D/L'd EUIII Complete in early Jan. of this year. My computer uses x64 Win XP Pro as the OS. My computer is 2 yrs old.

In Late Feb and then in Early March I purchased SoaSE Entrenchment and then SoTS Complete. Neither will complete the D/L process. I submitted a Support ticket with Impulse. After several EMs and even Disabling my AV and Firewall the D/L's still would not work/complete. Today after running their special SDSupport Tool.exe program I'm notified that Impulse and the games they sell do Not support x64 XP. What?!! They did in Jan and all last year! So what has changed? They also closed the support ticket! A Mr Hendsell Manager of the Support QA team was the one who replied and closed the ticket. I did every thing they asked and the problem is on their side but they copped out on me.

I of course fired back a reply asking for a refund on my 2 purchases. If they do not give me a refund Impulse will be deleted from my Computer and I will Never use their services again. I don't take kindly to theft.

I wholeheartedly agree, seeing as i`ve been treated badly by gamestop at their stores, and one time even being scammed. Infact i just cancelled my sins pre-order because of this and will not be using impulse in the future, stardock really made a stupid decision on this, even if they did get alot of money for it.

Logged

"But the Universe is a big place and whatever happens, you will not be missed."

There are really 2 questions:- If I simply copy the whole Star Ruler folder to another destination and uninstall Star Ruler, would Star Ruler run from that destination folder? Wouldn't it need some registry entries?I could try myself, but maybe someone knows already.- Using the Impulse "Archive" function gives me a file with the extension ".impulse". How do I restore Star Ruler from that file (renaming it to exe doesn't work) without using Impulse?

The reason given is they would not be able to do what they like doing (and he is in the business because he likes it, not for money), which is creating cool software. Or do be more precise, they would be stuck making software for Impulse. Look at Valve, they have only released one new game of late.

Now for a publically traded company this would truely be a crap decision.

But he sold it to Retailer who he pretty much despises. He doesnt mention GS by name. But he says that the retailers have destroyed pc gaming and they don't let the small indie devs a foot in the door. Which is why he started Impulse.

I cant see why Stardock couldn't run impulse as a separate company and be a subsidiary. All Brad would have to do is hire a CEO to run Impulse. So Impulse would have its own management and money and they wouldn't be taking resources away from Stardock.

According to JosEPh Impulse did support this in January. Unless it was put up by mistake.

He was wrong that it was supported, they were not really supporting XP64 as far back as 2008, if it worked great! If not then too bad, it was a use at your own ri type of thing. At that time it worked, but now it is another story.

Hello. I'm not (yet) a Blind Mind customer, but I just wanted to say I applaud and respect your decision to leave Impulse, and your actions make me much more inclined to purchase Star Ruler than I otherwise might have been.

I would also like to suggest that you consider including Good Old Games (gog.com) among your retail sales partners. I see mentioned in this thread several times that there is no native DRM for Star Ruler, so there should be no business incompatibility preventing you from listing your game with gog.com. I'm not affiliated with them in any way, except as a prolific customer. They respect consumer computing rights, and are currently the only digital distributor that I know of that is steadfastly defending a DRM-free market for PC gaming.

I would *love* to see Star Ruler included in gog's catalog, and I firmly believe that the accompanying increase in sales would be tremendous.

We did consider joining up with GoG but weren't sure if we would fit, given that it's a site whose primary consideration is older games. I do know that The Witcher 2 is coming out on GoG but then the company who owns GoG made The Witcher 2.

Yeah.. their choice of name was probably a little short-sighted. They bootstrapped themselves with the genuinely old stuff, but have been pulling in titles seemingly as much as the respective publishers will cooperate (which is still an uphill fight). Their collection of post-2005 titles is growing, and I hope continues to do so.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of the publishers are still viewing it the same way that movie studios view DVD sales relative to theater-ticket sales. I.e. they're playing ball but only because they perceive the DRM-free market as a way to squeeze more juice out of the fruit after the normal retail channels have run dry.

I'd be very surprised if gog wasn't enthusiastic about accommodating you. I know for a fact that they're constantly being deluged with customer requests for inclusion of any and all titles, so I can't imagine they aren't anxious to grow their catalog, especially from a like-minded studio with a contemporary game. (My opinion is that they're taking the leap with their Witcher 2 release as a way to be able to show compelling sales numbers to publishers, to soften their resistance to a DRM-free release of brand new mainstream games.)

Regardless, again I want to say thanks for sticking to your philosophical guns. Too few developers do so, and that's precisely why the industry has devolved to what it is today.

First off, I understand BMS's position in that they were likely given a very limited time window to annul their contract when the change of ownership was announced, and I don't fault you guys at all for taking the position you did. I also applaud your pledge of ongoing support for all owners, regardless of the purchase channel, so thank you.

With that said, I'm optimistically taking the opposite view of the purchase of Impulse by Gamestop. Gamestop is currently a "brick and mortar" store (while not privy to their financial situation, I can't believe that online sales account for a significant percentage of their revenue). Part of the constraint of operating a B&M store is the distinct limitation on the physical space they can devote to inventory. Gamestop has taken the position that console games/equipment are "where the money is at", and so have allocated the bulk of their physical space accordingly. I think most PC gamers are disappointed at that, but thus far that's just been the way things go. Where my optimism kicks in: I like to think that Gamestop has realized the error of their ways, and is using this as an opportunity to branch out. Maybe someone finally decided that "hey, even though we can't allocate our limited physical space to niche products, the internet is infinite" and so have decided to purchase Impulse to allow them to use the stores to cater towards 'things that sell well in stores' but will use Impulse to cater towards more niche products. My vision for this, and what I hope was running through Brad's mind when he sold, was to allow Gamestop to leverage their much larger marketing and sales budget/staff to put their time and expertise towards the strengths that digital distribution offers, while still using their retail stores to emphasize the strengths of a physical presence. Hopefully the outcome will be physical stores that cater to the generations of consoles that still require physical disks, and a digital download service that takes advantage of the fact that stocking a niche product doesn't prevent you from stocking a main-stream product, and so we end up with a healthy, robust variety of options.

It's actually XP "Pro" x64 and Microsoft still supports it. And they still sell it at any major computer retail company like Newegg and Tiger.

And it's Waaay better than Vista 32 or 64 and will still do some things that 7 x64 balks at.

All that aside Impulse is ignoring my EMs.

JosEPh

Support as in specifically make sure that software will work on it.

And XP64 was not really been supported as of 2008, so you were lucky it worked before.On another note, I came across a use peice of info regarding archiving with Impulse. To get the best results (meaning least chance of it not working) use the option to Download and Archive the application.

I will vouch above for the option of GOG.com being a vendor, and I will buy this game from them if you go there 100%. My account has, hmm lemme see......39 games on it at GOG and my latest purchase was the Battle Isle Platinum set.

GOG satnds up for DRM free, and I have every single one of the installers for the games I like on my HDD. What I like the most is that these installers will work an infinite amount of times off any media I put it on, whether it's CD or flash drive. And there is no restriction of any kind which is great. Because they treat customers so well there is actually only like 10 of their games being pirated, out of 300+ in their catalog that is very good considering it's an open DRM-free installer. Their customers respect GOG and because of this GOG treats customers well, which makes customers respect GOG more. Very good company. Don't worry about their initial focus of good old games, GOG included a few new games in their catalog like Empire Earth 3 and etc.

I will vouch above for the option of GOG.com being a vendor, and I will buy this game from them if you go there 100%. My account has, hmm lemme see......39 games on it at GOG and my latest purchase was the Battle Isle Platinum set.

GOG satnds up for DRM free, and I have every single one of the installers for the games I like on my HDD. What I like the most is that these installers will work an infinite amount of times off any media I put it on, whether it's CD or flash drive. And there is no restriction of any kind which is great. Because they treat customers so well there is actually only like 10 of their games being pirated, out of 300+ in their catalog that is very good considering it's an open DRM-free installer. Their customers respect GOG and because of this GOG treats customers well, which makes customers respect GOG more. Very good company. Don't worry about their initial focus of good old games, GOG included a few new games in their catalog like Empire Earth 3 and etc.

Can you still back up GOG games to DVD. I know on GG SR is DRM free. And all you have to do is copy the SR exe to DVD.

Yes, just copy the installer to whatever media you choose. It can be CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, Flash drive, USB HDD, Solid State HDD, and even a few smaller ones maybe even Zip Drives (Master of Orion 1+2 totals like 30Mb)

The downside is this can turn off major companies, and I have not seen a current Indie game on GOG yet. Nevermind, browsing and I see Shadowgrounds which is an Indie game from 3 years ago. Hmm, we'll see what Blind-Mind does......

Just to add what I can to the GoG discussion: I actually contacted them about a game I developed (a pretty simple indie game) a while back, and they replied that they only sold old games, as the name implied. I think the email actually said something like that. Almost sounded sarcastic, in a refreshing "there is a person and not a robot sending me this email" kind of way. Anyway, they seem like cool people.

They also seem to have started selling some not-so-old games recently, so maybe they will be interested in newer/indie games now.

And all that aside, I just learned of Blind Mind Studios and Star Ruler from all this hubbub. I think you've snared me.

Dark_Oppresor, when did you make your inquiry to GoG? I would be disappointed if it was recently, as that would indicate an active resistance on their part to broaden their market footprint. And as a GoG customer, if this were the case, it would make me contact them regarding their stance towards indie games (both new and old).

My hope is that they indeed wish to include as many decent games in their catalog as they have the resources to support, regardless of release date. I suspect that to some extent they've had to tread lightly, avoiding the perception of poaching revenue from the very entities with which they must negotiate.

Just to keep this a bit up-to-date: Within a week's time: The Affiliate program is ended due to the GameStop take over (that means it would have ended for us too, so we would no longer receive an 15% markup on royalties from people who buy Star Ruler from our website).

GameStop is putting up a digital storefront on Facebook (probably with the intention to 'poke' people about pre-orders and/or go "ThisGuy just bought X game at GameStop! He chose you as his 'buddy', so click here to receive an exclusive discount on the game he bought for your purchase!), and the Power-Up program is going to be 'integrated' with Impulse along with Impulse somehow being integrated with GameStop's website. They have also announced that Power Up will be offered to people on Impulse. EDIT: Currently, Power Up is a free membership at GameStop; Power Up Pro is a paid-for membership that includes discounts and pre-order information as well as special offers.

Also, though it's not coming from GameStop, Brad suggested that he believes GameStop will win out over Steam due to being able to leverage its game sales program to give discounts on Impulse. (my e.g.: You trade-in one game and are given the option to get 'impulse credits' or just credits to your power up account; instead of getting cash on your game or even a store credit, you get discounts on games.) What's cheaper than giving a customer money? Giving customers fixed discounts with expiration dates. Again, pure speculation on my part, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a glimmer of truth in the example Brad gave.

It's sadly looking like our historical appraisal was actually an appraisal of their corporate policy. I'm still hopeful that GS has changed and has figured out how to make this work but these are not confidence building announcements, one after the other, all negative.